Campaign for leaner government — Kpoh
A member of a Presidential Committee on Emoluments (PCE), Mr Napoleon Kpoh, has charged Ghanaians to campaign for leaner governments to forestall the payment of huge sums as emoluments at the end of each tenure to government appointees.
Advertisement
Mr Kpoh, a consultant who was defending the work of the Professor Dora Francisca Edu-Buandoh PCE said, “We have been fair with the beneficiaries and Ghanaians.”
He said the crux of the matter was the large size of government and not the amount fixed as emoluments.
“The amount pegged for the President, about GH¢22,000, was nothing to write home about, taken within the context of the work he had to do,” Mr Kpoh stated.
He stressed, “The problem lies with the large numbers of appointees,” and therefore charged Ghanaians to campaign for leaner governments to forestall the payment of huge sums as emoluments at the end of each tenure.
Mr Kpoh also proposed the appointment of the PCE early in the tenure of a government for recommendation on emoluments to be made early and applied immediately, instead of the current practice where the committee was appointed in the dying days of a government and recommendations made to take retrospective effect.
Independent Emoluments Commission
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Kpoh also called for the setting up of the Independent Emoluments Commission as recommended in the report of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC), as one of the ways to streamline emoluments paid to public office holders under Article 71 of the 1992 Constitution.
The office holders detailed in Article 71 include the executive, legislature, judiciary, heads of independent constitutional bodies and other heads of public agencies, whose salaries are drawn from the Consolidated Fund.
Retrospective
The Professor Dora Francisca Edu-Buandoh PCE was debated and accepted by Parliament last week, with a 10 per cent across the board increase in the salaries of the Article 71 office holders.
The result of the deliberation in Parliament was the retrospective effect of the emoluments, which was to start from 2013, and the attendant public outcry.
Mr Kpoh explained that that was in line with the recommendations made, as the emoluments were determined late and should take retrospective effect to cater for all the period the officials had worked before the determination.
“What it means is that from January 7, 2013 to the point we submitted the report, they did not have, legally speaking, conditions of service; they were only dwelling on the conditions of service of the previous administration,” he said.